That said, Roberts did shake up the daily routine around Redmond. He asked each of the company's four teams to submit an operating budget for the year, and charged them with making their own decisions, upending the old, top-down approach. He ran seminars to teach everyone from miners to the sales staff about the principles of quality management. He sent hourly workers to a nearby college to study economics. Teams created their own work schedules and started meeting weekly to discuss operations.
Even these small steps proved tricky. Glen Harward, who's held various jobs in his 15 years at Redmond, recalls a few co-workers skipping the seminars and balking at Roberts's ideas. Employees were used to doing the work, not spending time on the clock talking about it. Few had ever been charged with making an important decision on the job. Managers, for their part, were unaccustomed to having their ideas challenged.
As teams gained autonomy, issues of trust arose. Instead of focusing on their own jobs, people began questioning whether other teams were working as hard as they were. Money was at stake: By the mid-1990s, Redmond had introduced profit sharing, twice a year distributing 10 percent of net profits to employees. If one team slacked off, it hurt everybody.
Roberts persisted despite occasional rises in temperature, believing that if people were recognized regularly, they'd stop the comparisons. He also organized cross-functional activities so workers from different parts of the company could get to know one another and learn to work together. That proved critical as Redmond hired more employees and the number of teams grew to its current 14.
It took time, but the new management principles led to the bubbling up of all sorts of new ideas. Last year, for example, Harward, now a production worker for RealSalt, suggested to Darryl Bosshardt, who leads the RealSalt production team, that the group begin working "four 10s"--four 10-hour shifts a week--rather than the usual five eight-hour shifts. Bosshardt was skeptical. "All I could think was that we'd miss a day of production," he says. But Harward, who spent several years working four 10s in the mine before joining the RealSalt team, made a good argument. Switching to a four-day week would cut unproductive time spent on breaks and waiting for equipment to warm up. If they ever needed a fifth day, they could work overtime on Friday. Bosshardt agreed to give it a try. Output increased. At many manufacturing companies, Roberts says, "workers on the frontlines are asked to contribute with their hands, not their minds. It's hard for people to believe that letting them leave the line, so to speak, can add value. But it pays off."
Redmond doesn't have an org chart, titles, or even job descriptions, a fact that continues to vex many Redmond employees. "I have a very autocratic personality and it's hard to let that go," says Mike Mumford, team leader for Redmond Trading, the subsidiary that markets RealSalt. Before joining Redmond in 2004, Mumford ran his own $13 million window distribution company and served 12 years as a captain in the British army. "Redmond doesn't work like the British army," he says. That's for sure. Instead of pigeonholing people into jobs, Roberts believes everyone should have the chance to stretch into new roles and learn. In fact, many people are on their second, third, even fourth job at the company. Feron Reed started in the mine a couple of years ago and now makes sales calls for the company's agricultural salt products. Aaron Gabrielson got hired as an IT expert but has also become the go-to person on corporate branding.
Not everyone is so motivated. In 2003, the company laid off 14 people after a mild winter hurt sales of deicing salt. Roberts didn't have a number in mind when he sat down with team leaders to decide whom to let go, but it was obvious to everyone that, for these workers, Redmond was never going to be more than just a job. Roberts thinks the economic pressure gave him the guts to do what should have been done anyway. If someone's heart isn't in the work, he says, it's better to let him or her go. "Figuring out how you're going to contribute takes a great deal of self-discipline," Roberts says. "For people used to structure, working here can be very uncomfortable."
Indeed, there's a joke circulating among workers that outsiders think they've joined a cult--a cult that makes them read books. No one's being brainwashed, but new employees are strongly encouraged to read business classics like Good to Great and Raving Fans. The Shared Values Thought that begins every meeting derives from a company document, a mission statement of sorts, that talks about being passionate, trustworthy, accountable, and humble.
Sometimes it can feel like employees are talking in code. When RealSalt's marketing team got together recently to discuss a job vacancy, everyone agreed with one person's suggestion that they look for a "red empathetic woman." They had all read Taylor Hartman's The Color Code: A New Way to See Yourself, Your Relationships, and Life, a book that categorizes people into one of four colors based on personality, and knew that reds are power wielders born to lead. Roberts, for the record, is a blue, which means he's quality-oriented, loyal, and at times self-righteous. Maybe that smug streak is why, as a CEO, he now shuns the profession he once embraced. "It's ironic, but I'm not interested in consultants coming in and telling me how to do things," he says, then laughs. "I don't know how to make sense of that myself."
